


Like the Dawn

by irishavalon



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Genderfluid Character, Genderfluid Loki (Marvel), Internal Monologue, Loki (Marvel)-centric, M/M, POV First Person, POV Loki (Marvel), Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pseudo-Incest, References to Torture, Reunion, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-04 22:41:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15157208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irishavalon/pseuds/irishavalon
Summary: "I did not fake it this time. My death. I didn’t mean to come back to consciousness. If you see me again I know you’ll kill me before I can tell you this.But then, perhaps you’d kill me anyway if I told you this truth.That I meant to die.That I meant to die for you."Loki's thoughts as they return to life and set about searching the universe for Thor.





	Like the Dawn

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the song "Like the Dawn" by the Oh Hellos. Please give it a listen, and enjoy!

_ I’m coming. _

_ Thor, I’m coming. _

 

I’m climbing the branches of Yggdrasil, like the hidden Midgardians, Lif and Lifthrasir, that Father used to tell us about when we were children, when he scared us with stories of the End of All. The worlds are in chaos; do you know? You accused me of neglecting them during my stint as Royal, but that was nothing.

The tree is burning.

There are ashes in my hair and smoke in my nostrils. Norns, I pray you are alive.

 

In my head, I hear your voice.  _ You really are the worst brother.  _ I hear your screams when that madman lifted me into the air by my throat. If I told you it didn’t hurt, would you believe me? 

It hurt. You know it did. 

I did not fake it this time. My death. I didn’t mean to come back to consciousness. If you see me again I know you’ll kill me before I can tell you this.

But then, perhaps you’d kill me anyway if I told you this truth.

That I meant to die.

That I meant to die for you.

I am just as surprised as you.

How long has it been since I stopped looking at you with bitterness and malice rising like bile in my throat? How long since I last looked at you with the awe and love of a younger sibling? I know you wonder if I ever did. I promise you I did. 

 

When we were young I thought you had hung the moon and the stars. When we were young I thought I existed to make you happy, and you existed to make me the same. Father would wax poetic about your future kingship and I had no ill will towards that plan. I thought we’d reign together; I think you thought the same. You would always say “when we are king,” not “when I am king.” 

It was not until I was much older that Father told me the truth. And then I sabotaged your coronation. I thought you knew. I thought you were taunting me with promises that we would rule together, when all along you were planning an elaborate joke. I should have known.

Cruel practical jokes were my forte. Have you ever even had a nasty thought cross your mind, brother mine?

Brother, you were the sun. Are the sun. You are the glowing light in the distance, guiding me home, if you can call it that. Midgardians speak of a light at the end of the tunnel when you die. You are the light at the end of the tunnel bringing me back to life. You are the dawn, slowly turning the roses in Mother’s garden golden with your light. 

_ The sun will shine on us again. _

 

I know now you could never hurt me that way. The look on your face when I let go, when I fell into the black abyss of space, away from your light and the rainbow glow of the Bifrost, told me I was wrong. Your hands clutching my shoulders on that cliff face on Midgard, begging me to come back home, told me I was wrong.

You know I hate being wrong. 

So I didn’t come home until you dragged me back to the glittering golden palace of our childhood, in chains. When you looked at me then in the throne room when Father sent you away, I almost broke. The pain and betrayal in your eyes still haunts me. I wanted to scream at you.

I wanted to spit at Father’s feet and tell you all everything. How Thanos found me as I fell down, down, down, into the bottomless cosmos. How the Mad Titan as they call him plucked me out of the dark and chained me in the bowels of his massive ship. How he told his followers, his “children,” to torture me, break me down until there was nothing left of me but obedience and fear. It took him months of constant pain, illusions of betrayal, death and resurrection and death again, but at last he left nothing but a quaking, bloody shell where the God of Mischief and Goddess of Stories once stood. I was too tired and hurt to slither out of trouble, as I usually do. 

His children sent you to me, you see. You and Mother and Father. I don’t know how; I had never given them any information about you or who I was or where I had come from. You came to me, again and again. And again and again, hope and awe and love would flair up within me. You came to save me, to bring me home, to put me back together again. And then the illusion would shiver and vanish, or twist your bright features into cruelty, abuse, anger. Until I finally realized you weren’t going to come, until I could no longer hold my head up.

And then he had me in his grasp. I wasn’t brainwashed, I wasn’t mind controlled, it wasn’t the Titan seeing through my eyes and moving my body like a puppeteer when I came to Earth. It was me, and it wasn’t. I was no longer your devoted sidekick, or even your sibling whose tricks were sometimes too mean. I was a pawn because everything on Midgard reminded me of you, and every thought of your shining light fizzled to black hatred in my mind. You were nothing more than dangling bait that I had learned would not benefit me to take. You were nothing to me, because I knew I was nothing to you.

I didn’t truly awaken until you seized me and forced me to look at you as you begged me to come back. You were so adamant, and behind the anger I realized you were afraid. You were afraid because I was me and I wasn’t. I was alive and I wasn’t. Did you even recognize me, seething under the learned hatred, the exploited jealousy, the trauma you knew nothing about?

When you didn’t vanish, didn’t twist into some nightmarish version of yourself who had always hated me, didn’t try to kill me on sight, I awoke. Not completely, but I realized it was you, truly you, coming for me, promising to bring me home. The rising sun of a love long suppressed almost knocked me over. But it was too late; I was already under his control. He was already in my head. And the anger swelled in me again, remembering you did not come for me in the year or so that I was chained to a ship wall, blood dripping from my mouth and bruises blossoming on pale skin. Didn’t you know I was alive? Didn’t you know I was somewhere? Didn’t you even try to come find me? I had no choice to follow his orders, that mad purple brute. 

Your light couldn’t find me. Your dawn couldn’t reach me. I was already too deep in shadow. 

But I’m awake now, Thor. I’m coming.

I’m climbing up through the branches when once I fell. I pass drifting embers like stars and I pray for your life. I know you’ll be fine; you’ve always been fine. You always come out on top, whether you’re fighting dark elves or our sister or me, or even the apocalypse itself. But I know Thanos. I know what he’s capable of. I wasted precious time pretending we had returned to a time long passed, when I should have been telling you what I knew. I should have told you I had the tesseract. I should have told you Thanos will stop at nothing to possess the stones, and that when he has even one in his grasp he will be unstoppable. I should have told you Thanos could make a god crumble even without the gauntlet, without even lifting his own finger.

 

I finally came home, after a Midgardian year away. I came home in chains, knowing the Titan was still out there, knowing you and your Earth friends had won a single battle and were celebrating like it was the end of a war. Father glowered from his throne; you left as soon as you were able, to smash enemies with your mighty hammer and your warrior friends; and Mother tried to help in vain. 

She came to me, you know. As I rotted in a cell that was too small for my ragged mind. She came once with books, again with a table and chair. She would come to speak to me outside of my cell or as an illusion flickering inside the white walls with me. She couldn’t keep away, even when I ignored her or shouted at her or called her all sorts of names a child should never hurl at their mother. 

She told me about what I’d missed. Sometimes she read to me. I spoke little outside of trying to hurt her into no longer returning. I was ashamed and I didn’t know how to handle that. I was scarred, deeply, and didn’t know how to tell her. When she spoke of you or Father, I was either quiet or making nasty, bitter comments under my breath. 

Once, just before she died, she mentioned you. I do not remember what she said. I didn’t know it would be the last time I saw her. I only remember feeling so many dark emotions, anger and jealousy and bitterness. But my heart was aching, too. It was aching for you, and I hated that. You hadn’t come to see me, not once. But still the need for you hurt fiercely with every breath, with every beat of my heart.

Mother’s illusion stood near a corner, and when she mentioned your name I kicked a chair so hard it toppled over and skidded several feet. I said something cruel but forgettable, but her reply stopped me in my tracks. 

I hear it now, as my muscles strain and I travel through portals too numerous to count. 

_ “He misses you dearly. He speaks little, smiles even less. He was like that when we thought you dead, too. He still mourns you.” _

I think that’s why I agreed to help you, though Mother was gone and I’d lost your trust and I felt nothing but tense jealousy when I looked at the Midgardian woman we were going to save. Her words showed me a world I had long stepped out of, long buried deep in my heart where the thorns of memory could not pierce me. A world where it was just the two of us, two children, running wild and carefree through palace halls and sun-drenched meadows. A world in which I loved you, when to love you meant I saw you as my brave and steadfast brother, not as an untouchable dream of golden skin and rosy lips. A world in which I could touch you, when to hold your hand meant something different than it would now. Will you let me touch you when I see you again at last? Will you smile and laugh and run with me through the moors of our childhood, though they are nothing but a sooty stain on the World Tree now? Will you tell me you love me, as you did when the world was new and the dawn was bright and I had not yet hurt you so deeply?

Will you let me love you as I do now?

Because I do.

Thor, I love you.

 

We saved the woman and I knew you’d fix the world. I knew Thanos would come for the Aether and I knew if I saw him again I would break. I did not plan on losing the battle with the Dark Elves, but I made my choice when I was hit. Again, I faked my death, and again I made a bid for the throne, and again I let you mourn me.

I didn’t think you’d mourn me.

You left, and  _ gods _ , it was boring to be home without you. Mother was gone, you were questing, and I had sent Father to Earth. I had what I thought I wanted, power and no one to challenge it. But I missed you. And missing you hurt like a battle wound, like the stabbing I didn’t feel on Svartalfheim. It hurt like the Mad Titan holding me aloft while I heard your muffled yells, while I saw you struggle against your bonds out of the corner of my eye before the blackness closed in.

It hurts to remember you fighting for me. After everything I’ve done, everything I’ve been, the many lies and scalding words and gaping wounds I’ve left you with, you still tried to save me until my dying breath. And when Thanos dropped my body to the ground, a part of me still lived, a part of me clung to consciousness, clung to my body. You broke free of your bonds at last, draped your body over mine and held me close. 

_ I mourned you, I cried for you. _

I heard you weep.

I felt your shaking hands.

And then I died.

But I’m alive now, Thor. I’m coming.

I’ve been climbing, traveling, passing through worlds for Valhalla knows how long. But still I come. I do not stop, I do not sleep, I do not eat. I will stop when I reach your feet. I will sleep when I am in your arms. I will eat when I am at your side and this nightmare has passed.

I will rest when I can touch you, love of mine.

 

The last few weeks have passed so quickly, I can scarcely remember my feelings when you came home and discovered my transgression at last. Your strong hand on the back of my neck, Mjolnir careening towards my face, your voice in my ear, sounding almost amused. You were angry and I did not remember how to cajole you, but something foreign and familiar all at once wound around my heart and squeezed tight. I would not admit it then, how happy I was to see you, not even to myself. 

And we were off again, adventuring as we had when we were children, as we had four years before when you broke me out of prison. Anger melted into irritation and grew again into fury. And then our sister. 

I ran, as usual, ever the snake who so wants to be poisonous but in the end is just a toothless coward. I stood before the Titan in the bowels of the ship to become that venomous snake, just once, before I died for you. I wanted to be the snake for you, the one that doesn’t stab you or throw you towards the knife, the one who strikes down your enemies or loses their head trying. 

Hela tossed me out of the Bifrost and I landed on Sakaar. I’ve told you I was there for weeks.

I didn’t tell you I thought you were dead.

I didn’t tell you that thought almost destroyed me.

I didn’t bet against you in the arena. But I think you know that, don’t you? You were beginning to see through my lies, even then. I know you didn’t quite trust me then, either, but it felt different. After New York and after Mother died, you seemed ready to strangle me if I said the wrong thing, not that that kept me from goading you closer to that edge. On Sakaar, you seemed more amused than about to kill me, more annoyed than outraged. Even when I betrayed you again. 

_ You’re late. _

But somehow, you knew I’d come back to you. Somehow, you knew I’d follow you to the End of the World and back. 

Did you know that I love you?

I’m still following you, Thor. I’m coming. I’m coming.

I’m moving higher up the tree, using what energy I have to spare to send my magic through the worlds to find you. I’ll find you. If I die at your feet a wizened old person after millenia of searching, I’ll find you. Provided Thanos doesn’t kill you before I get there.

He cannot kill you.

I’ll destroy him inch by painful inch if he does.

 

The branch that once held Asgard is blackened as if struck by lightning, as though you called upon your powers to set it aflame. My hands are dark and dusty with the dead ash of worlds and parts of worlds as I pull myself up the celestial bark. 

The universe goes still. My ears ring with the silence. For the first time, I pause. Even the floating embers seem to freeze in midair.

Something has happened. Something is very, very wrong.

_ Thanos _ .

If he has cut you down I swear he shall not live another day.

_ You will never be a god. _

He will die like the mortal he is, his throat in the jaws of a viper.

It is silent and still for a moment longer. And then I hear the screams. I almost let go of the tree to cover my ears. It sounds like the universe is in mourning. The wails are deafening.

So he has done it then. The Mad Titan has proven just how deep his madness flows. He has killed innumerable beings in an instant. I feel the balance of the universe tilting dangerously. Thanos thinks the physical world is out of balance without structured population control. He is wrong. The universe cannot sustain the sudden loss of so many. He will only destroy himself and the utopia he thinks he has created.

He will destroy himself sooner than that if he has taken you with the others. I will not let him live long enough to reconsider his mistakes.

I must find you. I must get off of this tree. I must see you again. 

I am moving again, Thor. I’m coming.

At long last I see it: a doorway, and beyond it-- You. I don’t know how long it has been since the tipping of the scales. To me, it feels like seconds, but time passes differently against the trunk of Yggdrasil. But beyond this gossamer curtain separating Midgard from me, you are alive. You seem to have aged very little, though your eyes seem older, more tired. 

You hold an axe limply at your side, an axe that is dripping with the blood of the Mad Titan, though my killer is nowhere in sight. I don’t care. I don’t care how old you are, how long it has been. I don’t care what you have done or what you are doing. I care only that I have found you.

I have found you. And the sun shines bright and blinding upon your beautiful face.

Great skies, I love you. 

 

I summon every shred of magic I can and pry apart the veil separating you from me. I step through and you turn to me, but I cannot stand any longer. I fall at your feet in relief and exhaustion and tears I cannot hold back any longer, shaking like a leaf.

“Loki?” you say, and Norns, I love your voice. I missed your voice. “You’re alive?”

I should tell you. I should tell you everything, from the day I ruined your coronation, to the moment I looked at your shining face and realized I love you. I should tell you why I’ve done what I’ve done, and how  _ sorry _ I am, and why it has taken me this long to admit it. I should tell you about Thanos torturing me, how it took every last ounce of courage I do not have to stand against him on our ship as he hurt you and me and the Hulk, and then us again. How I have been climbing for Buri knows how long, how I have been searching for you through every world the great tree holds within its grasp. What you mean to me. Why I have so much faith in you and so little faith in me. Why I pretend it’s the other way around. How ardently and irrevocably and unconditionally I love you.

But I am tired and weak and weeping beneath you, and all I manage to say is, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I’m sorry.”

And then you are kneeling beside me and pulling me tightly into your arms, and the feel of you makes the tears fall more thickly. I press my face to your chest and breathe you in. How did I survive being apart from you for an instant? How did I manage while you were becoming a hero, when we were young and the world was new? How did I remain under the control of Thanos, even after I saw you again at last? How did I live even a moment on Asgard without your presence beside me as I ruled in Father’s stead? How did I last on Sakaar for weeks when I thought you gone forever?

You’re saying my name and clinging to me and,  _ heavens _ . Are you crying? I pull away slightly, and sure enough, your eyes are filled with tears. They do not look as tired as they did when I first saw you, though.

Oh, Thor. 

What have you done to me? What have I done to you?

“I’m sorry,” I gasp again.

You frown. “For what?” Your calloused thumb swipes away the tears on my cheek as you gaze down at me. 

“I did not mean to fake my death. I did not mean to let you mourn me again. Not without reason.” I whisper. 

“Loki,” you say, and your voice is so, so soft, that I can almost imagine you saying it.  _ I love you. _ But instead, you say, “Don’t you ever apologize for coming back to me.”

And you pull me against you again. I press my face into your shoulder and clutch the billowing, scarlet cape that fastens there. I had missed your cape. I have missed  _ you _ . You hold me for a moment, and I feel you tremble with sobs, feel myself shaking, too.

I want to kiss you. I want to tell you that I love you. None of the rest matters right now. But I cannot go from calling you ‘brother,’ to dying, to life again, to kissing you. So I press closer and pour my love into the tears that flow from my eyes and spot your red cape with burgundy. 

“How  _ did _ you come back to me?” You ask at last. 

No more lies. “I climbed the World Tree,” I say; you go still.

“You climbed the--” you start, pulling away in shock. Your eyes are wide and filled with tears again. My own eyes prickle as you beam at me. The way you look at me, I almost hope you feel the same. I cannot bring myself to ask. You stare at me and I stare back, your blue eyes filling me up with contentment and relief. I’ve found you. I’m home. 

I don’t notice you leaning forward. I don’t notice your arms pulling my tired body closer. One moment I’m gazing into your eyes and the next you’re kissing me and the world melts away. 

Everything is beautiful and everything is perfect and everything is bright. And, for a moment, Thanos does not exist somewhere in the shadows. It’s you and me and the dawn pouring from you and into me. 

But then you’re pulling away just as I’m trying to reach closer. You cover your mouth and stare at me like you’ve done something horrible and unforgivable. But that’s me, Thor. You are light and love and golden kingship; I am the dark and brooding disappointment. 

“I’m sorry,” you say. “I shouldn’t have--. I got carried away. I thought perhaps-- but nevermind. Forgive me.”

“Thor.” I whisper, if only to get you to stop with the guilty prattle that’s breaking my heart. I’ve found you and I’ve lost you in five minutes. 

But no. No more of this. No more lies and hiding the truth. No more running, no more denial. I will tell you. I promised myself I would tell you, as I hauled my sore, newly-alive body up the trunk of Yggdrasil to find you. You are the dawn, and you are everything, and I will not let you take the blame for this. You kissed me, but I kissed  _ back _ .

“Thor,” I say again. You remove your hand from your face, and I see you in the soft amber light of a room on the Grandmaster’s ship. I see you when you realized I had come back to you, after setting the events of Ragnarok in motion. I see you across the Bifrost, as you and the warriors returned from glorious battles, your golden hair blowing and your smile incandescent in the morning light. I see you above me, on the Rainbow Bridge and the plains of Svartalfheim and ascending home to Asgard, it matters not where or when, for you looked just the same: muscles straining to hold me safe, eyes wet with grief already, hand extended to keep me with you. “No lies.” The words are quiet, and I feel the irony of them coming from my mouth. I reach up and cradle your bearded cheek with one careful hand. You lean your head against it and close your eyes briefly. 

“I should have told you sooner,” you murmur. “Before Thanos, before Hela, before everything. I feared it was wrong. I feared you would laugh at me and never come near me again.”

My throat is dry and my heart is racing. I don’t remove my hand. I don’t move at all. “Tell me now.” I whisper.

You open your eyes, blue like the sky behind your head as I gaze up at you, blue like the waters at the edge of our world. I see it before you say it, and I know at last.

“I love you, Loki.”

And for the first time in what feels like centuries, I feel my lips pulling upwards into a smile. You smile back, and the light of you finally touches me again. Slowly, slowly, as I savor this perfect moment, I reach my other hand to your opposite cheek. I sit up in your arms and gaze into your eyes. I never want to look away, never want to let you go,  for as long as we both shall live. 

“I love you, too.” And then I kiss you.

I love you, I love you, I love you. If Thanos tries to take me from you again, I’ll strap him down and saw off his head with my smallest knife. Your light like the dawn spills over me, seeking out the most shadowy corners of my soul and plunging them into dazzling relief.

I won’t leave you again Thor. I’m here. At last.


End file.
